


Mandatory Decompression

by Volantis



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: But Also Discovering He Cares a Lot About His Companions, Character Development, Developing Friendships, Diary/Journal, Doctor With a Lot of Pent Up Rage, Dungeons & Dragons Campaign, Eberron (Setting), Emotional Venting, Gen, Khorvaire (Eberron), Lets be real: they're his family, Memories, Self-Reflection, Unresolved anger, Wild Band of Misfits Aboard an Airship, day in the life of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:08:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 5,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23459122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Volantis/pseuds/Volantis
Summary: I do not know many others who can clearly document every waking moment of their lives -- save for Warforged.We tend to remember everything.
Kudos: 1





	1. ENTRY 01

**Author's Note:**

> Back in 2004, D&D released the Eberron campaign, and my group and I dove in. As someone who always plays monster-races, I was excited to try the living construct race of Warforged. I do not particularly like using magic, so I dug up a Homebrew class of non-magical healer, called the 'War Medic'. Basically a field surgeon chemist, that performs physical procedures, and hand-brews medicines, antidotes, and anesthetics. His name was Asclepius.  
> To stave of psychosis, a very real concern for Warforged, they often pursue a hobby; Asclepius kept a daily journal.  
> His appearance is somewhat important to some of the entries, so a picture of him can be found here: https://www.deviantart.com/ravenshield/art/DnD-C-Sheet-Asclepius-163628434.  
> I apologize for the age of this image. I do need to update it.  
> Thank you for bearing with me on this intro.

**ENTRY 01:**

I am different. 

I mimic sameness.   
I was designed to achieve a familiarity in my appearance - but that familiarity, that closeness, it did not come standard with care, or consideration. 

I do not know many others who can clearly document every waking moment of their lives -   
\- save for Warforged.  
We tend to remember everything.   
I remember all of it.  
The very moment, when my eyes opened to view the world for the first time - and the very second moment - crippling awkwardness.   
The lights were too bright - all my lines, and shapes, and _places_ , on display. Eyes half-shut, shoulders shrugged up, probably a little pigeon-toed - not quite the pillar of strength and inspiration they were maybe expecting.

People had stared, and it had been so quiet. Not that soft kind of silence that brings comfort - it was that...loud, harsh, sort of kind, that broke grossly when a man barked some staccato, unsatisfied, sound and made to leave.   
Shame that; looking back, he of all gathered certainly would have found mirth in watching me, a helpless babe, turn my ignorant face forth and whence, searching every leering eye, while they politely muttered malcontent under their breath. Not polite for **me** \- that is worth mentioning.   
My Forge Master be spared. 

I was, most certainly, different. 

I came into this world in a flash of light and heat - an inglorious jumble of metal ore, stone, wood, and glass, taking a stuttered breath to cool the quickly heating mess of magic-soaked flotsam twisted up inside me.   
I was made live with language installed - good forethought, _Father_ \- but, oh, no context provided; my thanks, I completely hate it. 

Sounds starched and clean on the outset. Seconds alive, and already speaking, walking, being tasked about. Ah, and my favorite first notion - that _crushing_ envy.   
Can not save face and gloss over that. After all, this journal is a wasted, narcissistic, chronicle of my whole four and a quarter years worth of rueful agonizing...so, may as well cut to the heart of it. 

The massive jealousy I had felt, seamlessly weaved in a tight plait through every moment of my first year has defined who I have become today. In a generous defense of myself, it is not entirely uncommon for my people to develop jealousy - even, often times, as their first, truly complete emotion. The others, though...I feel like I had watched them develop such feelings in more acceptable avenues - during the war, many of my brothers and sisters rose to the ranks of Warlords and Battle Masters. Proud, to be sure, but nonetheless made to bend a knee to any human who so much as occupied the same geography for a kilometer; no matter the rank, no matter the disposition. Suffocating that small flame of pride in their hearts before it had a proper chance to warm their chests.

 **I** was just angry because I was short, and different looking; born into no implicit familial love or encouragement - I felt adrift. Abandoned at the outset.   
Childish nonsense. It was petty then, and it is petty now. 

I am unconventional. Unimpressive. ~~Unskil~~ Not skilled in traditional schools of discipline.  
I do not understand magic, and I am not talented with locks or traps. I am clumsy with a sword or flail, and have hurt myself more often in the effort. I have not a knack for producing art, nor claim to be very bright; also I am not diplomatic or, really, even tactful.   
But I am not, by any stretch of the word, _unskilled._

I am constantly reading; science, history... _sociology,_ of all the suffering masochism...- spare the rod and spoil the child, hm?   
But, reading is an activity I can do alone.   
I seek answers to many of my wonders out in the world as well - books are a value that I would be a fool to pay no heed of, though they are rarely able to replicate the dizzying potentiality of life. My curiosity is often rarely suppressed by my fears - but make no mistake, I _am_ afraid. I think I have probably been afraid my whole life.  
The world casts an unsure eye to me in every encounter.   
Suspicion - Pity - Disregard - Ignorance.   
**Hate.**

I wonder if I could say that I was compassionate. I like to think that I am, but that notion always feels false; like a defense mechanism. Like, trying too hard to convince myself. I should not have to, I think, if it were authentic - is that not right? Maybe it is in my own way...however ugly that is. 

_A healer full of hatred._   
I would agree that is a polarizing notion, though not without usefulness; just steeped in discomfort.  
Medics, by the very element of their existence, should be altruistic, and selfless. I would not be so inclined to say they should behave as immovable to their tenants as paladins to their oath, but...at least _decent_.  
I am not **decent.**   
I am exceptional at my work. In theory and in practice. Medicine is my muse, and I have embraced her over-poured confidence with every ounce of myself.   
I know that is only half of what makes a medic worth their salt in this world, but I happen to think it is the important half. Bleeding hearts would have you believe the opposite, but I would guess their flowered opinions would fall away like sand, should they need the tending of my skillful hands against their wounds. Platitudes and gentle feelings will not stop the bleeding...

...but it will soften the way out for those who have spent all of their chances.   
I know that it is _this_ \- for all my skill - which lends me to failure. The worn and broken spines of my books speak of such stalwart intent to be better, but that will never really matter until I decide that medicine is more than books. 

  
I had, at some point, decided that I did not - would not - care.  


I do not relish the thanks of others. I do not seek the approval of anyone, but myself - a fruitless effort.   
People forget. They remember only the parts of history that they choose to have merit. They will often remember a time when they felt the nearing grasp of death, but none else. The face of their salvation sealed from their subconscious behind a veil of darkness - or in many cases, brain drowning in chemicals secreted in urgency, they will swear later to bearing witness to the glowing personage of some imagined patron lord. What selfishness, to think any omnipotence would worry themselves to intervene on any single insignificant candle snuffing out. 

I seal myself away, most nights, to my chambers. I keep the light low to dissuade any potential company. I pass the hours, scrubbing endlessly, to get the blood stains out of my apron. It matters to me because it is not sanitary. It matters to _them_ because it changes what comfort I bring. 

It is a task I have too often. I am not always as successful as I would like. The attempts keep me busy well into the night. 

I **am** compassionate. 

There are weeks that I seal myself in my chambers to study, and grow more useful. I develop new medicines, anesthesia, salves, and oils; small repose and miracles for the flesh that I do not myself possess. My medical tomes are dog eared, covers worn smooth, their pages loosening from their bindings.   
I forfeit the warm light of the sun, and sensations of the wind and rain...to be _better_.   
To be better, so that when _they_ need me - when my **crewmates** need me - I can give them nothing less than my absolute best. 

I will care if they die. 

Smaller and lighter. Wide, bright, eyes. Four fingers - one thumb. Boots.

I am different. 

And I will never wish to be the same. 


	2. ENTRY 02

**ENTRY 02:**

I do not dream, but I understand the profound basis of dreams. 

I also understand that I want to dream so badly.  
  



	3. ENTRY 03

**ENTRY 03:**

The hour was late. My crewmates and I were awake while the borough slept - as per our Captain's agreement.   
These folk had been wary to grant us shelter, after our arrival had spurred a battery of attacks by enemies not known to them at any generational history. The diplomacy involved in negotiating the terms of our, explicit, temporary keep was so far beyond any ability of myself to even _pretend_ I had, that our Captain did not permit me present during the conference.   
So, I had stood outside the Governor's chambers, like a patient mount tied to a post. No doubt, based in the looks of passers-by, they had considered me much the same as one would evaluate property. A pet; a tool.   
Had these folk even heard of The Treaty of Thronehold, much less actually seen a Warforged with their living eyes was of considerable question. 

But the Argo had been damaged, and we had not _chosen_ to port here; it had simply happened in a moments necessity. Would these villagers have preferred the loosening of our elemental battery? The raucous beast would alight to the skies, filling the eve with flame, and would see to the end of all life for leagues in its furiosity.   
Had they ever been privy to the sight of an airship at all, was perhaps a query more in line, based on observations of their distinctly humble surroundings. No one I had seen wore any fanciful luxuries or ornamentation; none of the painted and powdered faces, or lace-adorned bodies sashaying the stone laden thoroughfares.   
I _did_ approve of this, different as it was from our usual, more metropolitan, locales. My crewmates were less enthralled by the primitive lack of plumbing; the lamps burning with tallow, that apparently produced an odor which was offensive to Kalatash. 

After I was collected by Captain Val, we had been ushered to a sagging cottage alongside a western perimeter of the borough by an attachment of poorly outfitted guardsmen. There, we had been reminded of the simple footnote terms of our shelter - nobody sleeps this evening - patrol the perimeter of the village.   
Terms which would have been of no great consequence, had the lot of us not been restless, in near constant skirmish for a fortnight. 

**That detail is important.**

That evening was a heavy, moonless, dark - the stars laying dim, as though hidden by a silken sheet.   
I was seated on a bale of hay, with Shadow's twitching, chittering, homunculus curled into a tight, wrinkled, ball beside me. I had been working on an inventory list of the components I would need to purchase at our next - true - port, and was wondering of the stock offered at the Apothecarium in this rustic place, when the wretched beast beside me had raised its wrinkled head in query. Wet, waxy, eyes frenetically swept the wood around us, before it began hyperventilating in that disquieting way it does, pawing greedily at my legs. Fool heart that I am for a hapless creature...I sat there, asking it what was wrong, as though the pathetic thing would stop its hectoring and answer in a tongue not feral. 

So many lost seconds...how did I not notice the absolute quiet in the mule stable just behind me; the trees gone all still and breathless; the breeze seeming halted, without a whisper...   
The cruelty of hindsight is extraordinary. 

Weary as we were, we raised no alarm.   


There is a small sum of time to which I have no account for here - it is the time between standing, and thereupon being on my back. Every sound was permeated by a high pitched whine that pierced the space behind my eyes like an ice pick. In my vision was nothing, but quickly rustling, oil black, fur; all matted and greasy, tangled in forest litter. The heat of ragged breathe, from jaws jarred open upon my steeled left arm, dripping thick ichor over my face in veils. Luck - that I had managed to raise even an arm to that gnashing mouth.  
The dirt beneath me felt muddied and hot - collecting over me in a resin, while a distant sense of burning flame built in my collar and right shoulder.   
I was bleeding. My raised voice simply swallowed in the monster's hungry gullet. 

Overbright lamp light suddenly illuminated the twisting thing - revealing its sunken eyes, unblinking, and filled with a dirty yellow-brown glow that left streaks across space each time the beast tossed its accursed face.   
There was a painful, sideways, ripping of teeth against my arm then, and the weight of the creature displaced hard, rippled in a streak of red cloth, against my right side as we together rolled.  
My vision was swimming - bracing myself in the dirt, my hand came down over a cluster of broken, yellowed, teeth.   
Turning, it was chaos. The whine behind my eyes unrelenting, muffing the scene as though I was viewing it through thickened glass. Smoke cascaded from a fire I could not see; villagers running. A furred thing was thrown like kindling over a tower shield. Through the whine, I could abruptly hear Kalatash's echoing shout against my skull, as it psychically burst across the village. 

The deep cursing voice of a woman then broke my daze, in a flourish of knit red cloth - the same which had flown over my sight not moments ago.  
To my right, the beast which had pinned me asunder was receiving a brutalizing, by broom, at the hands of a wild-eyed Dwarven cotter's wife. Wooden handle stabbing and swinging, she had distracted the thing for precious seconds enough before Logan descended like holy fire and engaged the monster, to its bloody, yelping, end. 

As suddenly as the damned things had been upon us, had they seeped back, as shadows, into the wood. 

  
Then it was over.   
No calming silence filled the air. The sounds of the borough were laden with crackling flames, clattering boots, animals cries, and desperate shouts abound. There is no calm behind any encounter - that was a lie believed by less adventurous souls; told to them, no doubt, by those looking for stranger's accolades in exchange for glamorous tales of drama and heroism.   
No, the aire after battle is heavy, and bloody, and full of feelings like fear and anger and...shame.   
_I hate it._

  
She had offered me her hand; the Dwarven woman.   
She could not have been more than...ten stone; eyes angled upward toward me, though I was still seated. Her hand was callused; thick fingers, worn and scarred from a life of endless duty.   
I had taken that hand, and as I stood, stared into her heavy gaze. Eyes like burning wicks.   
She broke my gaze and stilled a moment, searching the dirt. I watched as she bent, picking up the loosed teeth left behind by the maligned thing. She stood then, and made to leave. Wordless.   
No admonishment, though I had felt I had deserved as much. My wounds were not enough this day. 

In a quiet voice, that I recall wavering and small as it left my mouth, I had asked her _"Why?"_.   
She stopped, facing me.  
I was impatient; I tried again, _"Why did you do that?"_. That flame-lit ember gaze hardened; tempered as the steel of my own body.   
  
**"Why do any of us do anything?"**

...   
How do you answer that? _Is_ there a right answer? A _wrong_ one? 

I said nothing.

  
I remember feeling the weight of shame. Then confusion. Then apprehension. I could not stop feeling so ungrateful - the twisting innards of my abdomen were in knots; I remember the heat across my face, like an iron. My mind had been a flurry of confrontation, _...why do any of us do anything? No, what answer is that! A sphinx's answer! Why did you do that?_  
People do _not_ do things like that for me... **for a Warforged.**  
The silence had cut deeper than the beast's claws, and through it all, I had ignored all but fully that I was still bleeding; my mind blinded to my body's ails while arrested in conflict.

But then?  
...  
Then, she smiled. She smiled and leaned toward me, one battered hand taking my own, and in my palm she had placed one of the beast's teeth.   
As I held the broken thing, it felt warm.   
Those embers. 

She left me there. 

It would take me days to realize that my silence - puerile, to me...profound, to her - had meant more to her than anything I could ever have said.


	4. ENTRY 04

**ENTRY 04:**

Make me an instrument of peace;  
where there is hatred, let me sow tolerance;  
where there is injury, healing;  
where there is doubt, faith;  
where there is despair, hope;  
where there is darkness, light;  
and where there is sadness, joy.

That I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;  
to be understood, as to understand;  
to be loved, as to love;  
for it is in giving that we receive,  
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,  
and it is in bringing comfort to the dying that we are born to life.  
…

This is but one of the many tenants of which I had been taught to act by. To live by. 

I can recite this ad infinitum. Backwards and fore. In many different languages.   
Despite this discipline, I have yet to truly understand it. 

My misunderstanding is perhaps a glaring failure when faced with my purpose as a healer.  
Is it possible that my greatest misunderstanding is in assuming that my disuse of this order is itself a misunderstanding at all. I was born into indifference. To learn that these words should _mean something_ so much more is a burden I must carry alone...and it is so much weight to bear, but...I do think it is less than I can take.  
 _And I try._

…where there is hatred, let me sow tolerance.

**Where there is hatred.**

**Let me sow tolerance.**


	5. ENTRY 05

**ENTRY 05:**

There are moments that I can not seem to recollect. Much as I try, the memories are irreferentially lost. 

It is ~~frighte~~ ~~sca~~   
uncomfortable. 

'Forgetting' is a very common, very _normal_ , condition of the functioning, sentient, mind. All walks of thinking folk, beasts, what have you - they forget. **They** do. 

Not us; not my people. Not **me**...

  
Warforged...we are a construct race, borne to many innate characteristics.   
\- We breathe, but superficially - the process does not oxygenate our vital fluids, but rather helps to cool our complicated, infuriatingly magical, innards.   
\- We do not sleep, nor share in the revitalizing nature of any state or form of complicit dormancy; we will never know the mysterious beauty of dreams.   
\- We do not consume foods or vital drink, nor imbibe in the luxuries of manufactured drugs and alcoholic pleasures. They would collect in the hollows of our innards and rot. 

\- We have eidetic memory. Ineffable retention. _We do not forget._

 _Oh_ \- but **I** do. I guess.   


Perhaps I am being unfair - to myself. There _are_ cases of memory loss in Warforged, well documented in fact, which clearly demonstrate a known degradation of neurological function, post significant trauma.   
In my case, useless as I have proved in any theatre of war, maladventurous encounter, or tavern brawl, it is entirely possible that I have collected one too many embarrassing knocks to the head.   
Worth noting too, that these studies were conducted less to identify the condition of wavering retention, and more to identify the development of psychopathy - something we...are very susceptible too; so, I would happily accept that my shame-laden lack of any worthy combat skill were to blame, and not some unstudied organic deterioration.  
  
Regardless - the realization that our known processes are not designed with the guarantee of a redundant fail safe is unnerving.   
How wonderful it is to be a living thing, with living problems.   


**That damn vial.**  
 _It_ brought on all of this anxiety. Sitting here, at such an damnable hour, complaining to these pages like I will ever allow another's eyes to see this insufferable, whining, trash. 

It had been nearly a full change of seasons that I had searched my chambers for the infuriating little ampoule of...

 _...an antidote?_  
Awful. 

A dog's age ago, I had panicked about this. Entire hours dissolving away, inconsolable; frantic even. Seriously considering options which, looking back, were wildly out of the realm of rationality - such as retracing my steps, _from the day I was born._  
I began distrusting my own recollections - writing every thing down - no matter how inane the minutiae of the day had seemed. Pages and scrolls were soon littering my desk, covered in the disconnected ramblings of a raving lunatic.   
I began to consider that I was not losing my memory, but certainly, was losing my mind. 

Then - just - there it was.   
Laying, partially obscured, by a loose congregation of leaflets, third shelf below the top on my bookcase.   
**The bookcase.** A space in my chambers which is never at rest, never alone. How, with as frequent my company to those shelves, was this glass snipe able to escape my furious, obsessive, hunting. If an inanimate thing could _be_ so cocksure and cheeky - it sat so lazily, _arrogantly_ even, catching the light of nearly every present lamp, at every possible angle. 

Cork cocked three-quarters up, and a thin layer of fine dust over the surface.   
I had ~~forgo~~ _left it_ for certainly longer than anticipated when... _ever_ I had placed it there, so haphazardly.   
Regrettably, I also do not...recall that occasion, whatever reason why, and if there had even _been_ a reason.

Today, I now keep that infernal vial on an actualized pedestal - a wooded stand, seated exactly at the spot, third shelf down from the top, in what is absolutely nothing but the pettiest of detestment for the memory of not remembering.

I can not remember what is in the vial, so it is not labeled.


	6. ENTRY 06

**ENTRY 06:**

The Last War. 

Chroniclers from across Khorvaire filled the archives of Sharn with tomes detailing the brutal history of that most final of engagements. A century long war which swallowed this entire world - ended whole nations, erased whole peoples from everything, but memory.   
All of it, over a family squabble. What incredible waste. 

It is said that history is dictated by the victorious, and for the most part, there is truth to that; but it is only a half-truth.   
History is kept in pages - preached in universities by the scholars and academics who stand stalwart by oaths to bring no fallacy to the minds of the people.   
They must lay to rest each day, and sleep must rob them of the knowledge that history too is kept in the minds of those who lived it.   
The victors, who implicitly agree - and the defeated, whose recollections are accused as flawed. 

I was, as I am told, on the _'winning'_ side. How glorious.   
Which was that exactly? The answer changes with each border crossing. 

  
Such an exhaustive effort was made to remove the deep footprints of our brutality - House Cannith destroyed the creation forges - my people's cradles - in a brilliant show of complicity after the treaty was signed in Thronehold.   
The history books would have you focus only on the rewards - Warforged won their freedom that day; we won our right to have our sentience fully recognized. 

It sounds so lovely in writing. The half-truth. 

The other half is that this was the same day that my people were denied a lineage. All who existed were the last, and 'the last' were not embraced with any measurable joy.   
It was a day of great fear, that has stretched on endlessly.   
Years gone by, and yet still my people are viewed by many as dogs without leashes. No more important a contributor to a room filled with thinking minds, than the chairs they sit in. 

That anger is a solid thing that sits in our chests. A violent, sharpened, thing, that some Warforged pull from their hearts and affix to their fists.   
That some - like me - fasten into their tongues.   
  
_Hate_ has a powerful gravity. It was the root of a war which nearly burned away an entire continent, and a cornerstone in an agreement amoungst men, who used it as a convenient middle-ground to save themselves, at the peril of a people who had no voice in the proceedings. 

I want to write that I do not hate Humans. I _want_ too. 

Humans _insist_ they are a civilized species. They _insist_ it until they believe it themselves; they teach this tenant to their children, who pass it along to their own. Generations away, you wind up with proud families able to trace their honourable lineage along branches so clean that the tree could be carved of crystal. 

...I can only _insist_ that I do not. 

To continue the cycle of hatred is to hold a mirror against one's face when questioning why hate subsists.   
To pretend it is not woven between every thread of society - to lie about its prominence is dangerous. Foolishness that will grant hate immortality. 

I will weld the hate into a cage around my heart, but forgo its use as a sword - instead, to burnish it as a shield.   
A phalanx to the apathetic spuriousness of the many, but which may be lifted to the hallowed sincerity of the few. 

I do hate Humans.   
I do not hate _the Human_.   


This will be my history book. A half-truth to the pages, and another to my mind.   
Some day I will die, and I do not waste any fool confidence that my body will not simply be smelted away for any materials of worth.   
My thoughts and experiences all vaporized away into the aether.   
The only _whole-truth_ , the one I keep alive simply by subsisting in this world - making them look at me; some days, needing me - hoping they will remember.

~~I do not think they will.~~

I _hope_ they will remember. 


	7. ENTRY 07

**ENTRY 07:**

Logan would say to me, _"...now exhale"._

It is an idiosyncratic mantra that he uses frequently when tension rises high.   
I can appreciate it.   
Honestly - it comforts me _now_. 

  
My crewmates are a curious mixture of... _everything_ \- race, ideology, character, skill.  
But loyalty, and intent - we share those notions like the land shares the skies. 

The beginnings were tumultuous. There were arguments, and a fair share of ignorant assumptions made. From all of us.   
I had to wonder about the motivations of a Kalashtar who was willing to keep elbow-scrapingly close company with a Changeling; or if it was remotely safe to allow a barbarian of **any** size on board of an airship.   
I truly suffered days away in attempts to discern what could have driven a paladin of any cloth to choose passage with... _the rest of us._   
  
Brevity be embraced - there are still numerous empty pages to fill - we would learn to ruminate on our petty prejudice; identifying all our wildly mistaken indifference as the unearned callousness that it was.   
Logan brought us conversation - the first barrier most difficult to breach.   
Kalatash would show us the vibrant colours that the world hides only from recalcitrant sight, and Loathan would learn to use those vivid shades to paint. Shadow, for all his vitriol, would fill our throats with laughter, while our Captain, Val, inspired us all to cast our eyes over the boundaries of the horizon...beyond the boundaries of the societal pressures that had sealed us away from one another. 

For me - my apron would become so stained by the blood of those devoted souls, my foolhardy ministrations to it be damned. Dousing my hands in boiling water was daily; sometimes hourly. The nights spent obsessing over every stock and implement in my lab - I would stitch their any wound, cure their any ailment.   
Soothe the pain; stop the pain.   
Logan tells me that miracles are possible through the hands of an impassioned spirit - I write it down,   
_Study miracles. Produce miracles. Do not let these people die._ **If they die, bring. them. back.**

Once in pursuit of individual goals, we have cast all aside to chase the fulfillment of the party. Eyes open to, and for, each other, _always_. 

  
This bedraggled, sarcastic, socially repellent...   
...heartening, devoted, honest band of fools. 

The most important people in my life...

...and a small dog named Scruffles. The most important non-person in my life. 


	8. ENTRY 08

**ENTRY 08:**

Names are a curious thing.   
The significance of them is perceived so differently across race, culture, religion...

Names can mean _so much_ \- or, nothing more meaningful than a clinical appellation for one's face. They can carry an entire bloodline through the aeons, leaving behind a trail of honour, or disgrace...or indifference.   
Names allow mortal beings to rest a foot into the realm of the infinite.

Daemons draw tangible power from their name; a fickle thing _that_ is - at once, an epithet that enrobes them in a dark armor, but if revealed, seeps a venom through their plates.   
Fey, with those mouth-fulls of entrancing geography, singing fully realized arias with every introduction.   
Orcs bearing entire tribes on their shoulders, with the names they carry forth from ancestral lines so long, no book, nor stone tablet, nor word of mouth exists which knows its true inception. 

  
My name was given to me by a cynic with a fork-tongue; a sarcastic, bedeviled, thorn-laden bramble of a thing, with a humour coloured murken like miserable hot sick. 

_Asclepius_. Patron lord of medicine, extant in some extra-planar Human pantheon bombast.  
I - Asclepius - with my hands made such, to manipulate the delicate flesh of mankind.   
Brought to life in searing light, by the uncaring resolve of a Forge Master - receiver of imperative shame by eyes cast low in disdain - carrier of a stone heart, made heavier by hatred.   
The name is an impeccable folly; an unrestrained epigram, bearing its teeth at my expense with every mention.  
A Gambol.  
Lark.  
Hoodwink.

**A joke.**  
Fool heart...it is one that I had cast upon myself. A humiliation like no other...

My people _earn_ names.   
They are badges rewarded for lives well lived; standards kept high on the mast against any raging gale.   
If no name is won, then we are to go without...brook existence as a pale and hollow thing, lacking worth of recognition; uncared for. 

  
_Damn them all to whichever hell they believe awaits them._

  
The depth of depravity those oozing hagfish had...to leave _me_ wanting for a name, was mired in a sludge of vindictive acidity.   
I - nameless wretch - who tirelessly studied nothing but to seal their ragged wounds.  
I - worthless cretin - who gathered their spilt innards and made them whole again.  
I - **contemptible bastard** \- who has submitted my life to saving their souls. 

An affront to be sure, I chose _myself_ a name - one riddled in spite, that I had hoped would ring heavy with indignation. As though to sully the gloriousness of an entire God.   
Hoping to swallow poison, and expecting another to suffer.   
It all used to make me laugh. It protected my heart, clad in a plate of withered humour. Sealing my derision behind an icy bulwark of apathetic deadpan. 

Unfortunately, I have kept this lie too tightly bound behind my tongue, and no one yet remains living, or at hand, who could possibly reveal me. 

Those introduced to me swell with second-hand pride at the sound of my divine moniker.   
_What wonderousness_ , they must think, with honesty. 

I can never ignore the sensation of falling.   
The joke is only at _my_ expense now. 


	9. ENTRY 09

**ENTRY 09:**

Loathan is deck-side, exercising my small mutt, Scruffles, as though the poor pup was some man-at-arm's destrier, preparing for assault. I can hear the jovial barbarian's shouts from my chambers - sealed door be damned. 

The halfling is a creature of interest to me.   
He often displays an intelligence greater than expectation would dictate - but, then, he holds his mouth agape whilst my mutt licks his face, and I am set backward in my consideration. 

A feral thing he is, for certain, but not without a great compassion - a rarity in this colder, hyper-rational, sort of world.   
This is his charm. A wild, aboriginal, spirit - he wakes each day, not knowing what the wind will bring him, and that mystique does not unnerve him...yet, it seems to endear him.   
He does not seem to care that contemporary society regards him a temporal novelty - a lost sort of folk, trapped in a forgotten era that civility and convenience have turned an inamiable eye too. 

I have never known a spirit that smiles in such good nature, so often. A baffling lack of bitterness exists in his entire posture.   
Yet, he has assuredly drawn more blood in his lifetime than my scalpels will ever know the touch of.   
His rage, unfurled, is terrifying. Small painted body, launching at his quarry like a firework loosed in a thatched hut. That roaring, primal, howl peeling forth from deep in his throat. He has fell beasts many heads larger than himself with nothing but his bare hands - fingers curled like vicious claws...wide eyes lit like burning fuses. 

  
Yet, at this moment, he is at play with a puppy, in a manner indistinguishable as a delighted child. Such purity of emotion - of person - is... encouraging.   
My heart does not beat; but it warms to this. 

My chamber door remains closed, but I have loosened the casements to let in the cool air - that jubilant laughter, excited barking intertwined, has carried in on the breeze. 

The calm is like a deep...slow...breath. 

  
Quill set to rest. I close my eyes - lean back in my chair - and smile. 


	10. ENTRY 10

**ENTRY 010:**

The Argo sings in the evenings. A low, consistent thrumming.   
If I stand on the deck, I can listen to her many swimming fins as they navigate the clouds in perfect meter. It is an opportunity to decompress that I greedily accept without hesitation.   
If, only briefly, I am offered a sense of near total contentment. 

The yawning blackness of the heavens, littered in the cascading dust of uncountable stars. 

I lay supine on the stern; unblinking...dim glow that I offer skyward, parsimoniously swallowed up by the ageless void.   
I raise my hand to absent company, and I trace the constellations that I have learned. 

In this envelope of stillness, a heaviness pulls back from under my eyes.   
Thoughts coerced to a shapeless silence.  
The humming wood beneath me shifts the air between my limbs just enough to feign a sense of floating. 

I close my eyes...

...and she helps me to imagine the unbelievable peace of sleep. 


End file.
